Nexus 6, Lollipop, and Office 365 syncing issues. Can I get some help?

[AC Question]

Nexus 6, Lollipop, and Office 365 syncing issues

I just recently purchased a Nexus 6. I have an Office 365 email account that is my main email address. I added the account to my Nexus 6 as an Exchange account and I receive my emails no problem. However, my calendar and contacts are not syncing properly. How do I fix it?

 

[WP7Nettwerk]

Re: Nexus 6, Lollipop, and Office 365 syncing issues

Try Nine app.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

 

[roundwound5]

Re: Nexus 6, Lollipop, and Office 365 syncing issues

Are you seeing any of your contacts or calendar items from Office 365 in their respective apps on your Nexus 6 since you posted your issue? There are several things to check but if you aren't seeing any of the data. I am assuming you have your Office 365 account configured as an Exchange account on your device since the account must be configured as Exchange in order to sync your contacts and calendar data.

First, verify it is configured to sync with your Nexus 6 by taking the following steps:

1. From your Home screen swipe down from the top of the screen twice and tap the Gear icon to access the device Settings app.
2. Scroll down to Personal and tap Accounts.
3. Tap Exchange
4. Tap your Office 365 email address.
5. Confirm Calendar, Contacts, and Mail sync are all enabled. The dials should be switched to the right.
* This also provides some basic information about sync status.

It's also important to note both Google's Contacts and Calendar include settings that allow you to selectively display accounts that synchronize that data with your device.

In Contacts tap More (three dots in upper right corner) > Contacts to display > Verify your Exchange (assuming O365 account is configured) is in the lest and selected.

In Calendar tap Menu (3 lines in upper right corner) Scroll down and your accounts with calendar data should be listed with each calendar folder. Check any calendar you want to display and the events should display in your Calendar view.

I hope this helps! If you run into any issues, or if you are seeing some Contact and Calendar data but not all after taking these steps please let us know on the forum.

 

[PeacePhil47]

Re: Nexus 6, Lollipop, and Office 365 syncing issues

Thank you RoundWound5.

Unfortunately, that did not fix the issue. And on the subject of the issue. . . My calendar is now syncing, so we are down to just my contacts. However, it is not that they are not syncing at all, it is that I'm only getting the email addresses of my contacts. No other information in the contact is syncing properly. Any suggestions?

PeacePhil

 

[roundwound5]

Re: Nexus 6, Lollipop, and Office 365 syncing issues

Thank you RoundWound5.

Unfortunately, that did not fix the issue. And on the subject of the issue. . . My calendar is now syncing, so we are down to just my contacts. However, it is not that they are not syncing at all, it is that I'm only getting the email addresses of my contacts. No other information in the contact is syncing properly. Any suggestions?

PeacePhil

I'm glad to hear your calendar is syncing now, and at least some of your contact data. Since you are seeing email addresses there's a couple of possible causes for this. I'm assuming you use Outlook or another mail client on a PC.

1) Only Suggested Contacts are syncing from your Office 365 account.

To test this open a web browser from your PC or even your phone and browse to your OWA (Outlook Web App) at Outlook.office365.com.
Click on the grid and go to People and verify that your contacts from Outlook are in the Contacts folder.
If they are not but you have Suggested Contacts you will need to move your Contacts from your local Contacts folder in Outlook to the Exchange Contacts so they will sync to the Office 365 server.

Before you proceed I would double check the Contacts to Display setting on the phone to make sure you have All Exchange selected. It may be that only Suggested Contacts are visible.

2. If the Contacts in OWA that you're missing from the phone include phone numbers and any other information you would see in Outlook, the folder or contact items may be corrupted on the server, preventing certain data from being displayed on your smartphone.

If this is the case you can export your Contacts from Outlook into a .PST file and run SCANPST.exe 4-5 times to repair them then reimport them into your Contacts folder.

This process can be tricky. If you have someone you can contact who admins for your Office 365 account or IT person you may want to reach out to them.

 

[PeacePhil47]

Re: Nexus 6, Lollipop, and Office 365 syncing issues

Thank you again. Your information has proven extremely helpful. While the issue isn't fixed, I think I am closer. Unfortunately, I think I have a couple of issues going on.
1. There is definitely something wrong between what contact folders I have in Outlook on my desktop and what contact folders are visible on OWA. I will contact the IT Dept to have them take a look at that.

2. While my phone is set to display "All contacts," if I go to the "customize" option and select the specific Exchange Account, it shows me options for the displayable contacts from all my specific "Categories," not my mail folders. The bigger issue for me here is that the majority of my contacts and "undefined" with any type of category. As well, there is no "undefined" choice in the customize window. So, with these specific issues, even if the IT Dept is able to fix the issues between my desktop version and OWA, I'm not sure it will help if my phone is syncing with categories not folders.

 

[roundwound5]

Re: Nexus 6, Lollipop, and Office 365 syncing issues

You are welcome! If you can get your contacts fixed in Outlook the contacts you've been missing should all sync to your Nexus.

1. This is key to syncing all of your contacts between Outlook, OWA, and your Nexus. The contacts you see in People in OWA are the contacts stored on your Office 365 Exchange account. If they don't show up there they will not be able to sync to your Nexus or any other mobile device. The fact that you're seeing Contact folders in Outlook that are not visible in OWA indicates they will need to be moved or imported into the Exchange account's Contacts folder in Outlook.

Your IT person should be able to assist you with this, but if you need to import Contacts from a PST (local folder) this Microsoft article explains the steps:
https://support.office.com/en-us/ar...6C1-90C7-B549B8F3C5F8?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

2. I'm glad you brought up the categories and folders. By default Exchange accounts have one Contacts folder as well as Suggested Contacts, but if you have more than one they will get lumped together in Contacts. Items can be assigned different categories and stored within the same folder on Exchange so anything not defined in a category will still show up in your Exchange contacts once they all sync from Outlook to the server, and from the server to the phone.

 

[PeacePhil47]

Re: Nexus 6, Lollipop, and Office 365 syncing issues

Well, here we are again. Unfortunately, I am beyond frustrated. Basically, I want my phone to work how I know it is supposed to work. I don't care to jump through hoops that I shouldn't have to, or add apps (paid apps) to my phone to make it do what it should do without said hoops and additions.

So, in follow up.

1. This not an issue. Every one of my contacts in Outlook are also on my OWA. What I thought I saw, regarding the different "folders," must have been out of delirium, because when the IT representative and I took a closer look, all of the correct "folders" were there. I'm not sure what I saw yesterday. My apologies for leading you down a rabbit trail here.

2. The categories are also not an issue (as far as I know anyway). I don't mind if they are all lumped together. On my Droid Maxx it gave me options to search for the categories. I assume this phone would do the same thing, if and when I can get it to sync all of my contacts properly.

So, basically, the IT Dept got involved and tried to sync my contacts. They were unsuccessful as well. They cannot understand why they are not syncing. They tried, as I did, to delete the account and add it back, but to no avail. On one of the attempts, the contacts did actually start to sync properly, but somewhere in the process, reverted to only syncing the "suggested" contacts, which included email addresses only, and random email addresses at that. The majority of our IT Dept techs, currently have Android phones that run Lollipop, and they are not having any issues syncing their phones with our Office365 account.

So, I have at this point, factory reset my phone. If the contacts will not install properly after this, I will return the phone, as it most definitely has a hitch in its giddy up.

Thank you for your most valuable time.

 

[roundwound5]

Re: Nexus 6, Lollipop, and Office 365 syncing issues

You are welcome, Peachphil47! Sorry to hear you're still having troubles. At this point since you've confirmed the contacts are all in OWA (thus on the Office 365 Exchange server) it sounds like your contact data is corrupted. Basically some value in the data is preventing your contacts from showing up on your phone.

The challenge is this could be on the phone's Contacts storage database or in the Exchange account (the data will usually still show up in OWA and Outlook in either case). As a last resort before exchanging it you can try clearing the Contact Storage cache and data. If you restored app data and contacts after the factory reset there's a chance the problem will come back.

1. From your Home screen swipe down from the top of the screen twice and tap the Gear icon to access the device Settings app.
2. Scroll down to Device and tap Apps.
3. Swipe from right to left until you see "All".
4. Scroll down and tap the Contact Storage app.
5. Force Stop, Clear cache, then Clear Data (any options that are grayed out cannot be selected...if no data is left or the app is already closed that means it's already done).
6. Reboot your smartphone. This wipes out the existing contact database on your Nexus and forces the contacts to reload from the server when the account reconnects.

You've got nothing to lose if everything is backed up and you're thinking of swapping out the device. There is the possibility the issue is in the Contacts folder in the Exchange account. The best way to test for this is to create another Contacts folder in Outlook. Call it something like "Contacts2" and move some contacts into it from the primary Contacts folder. If they show up on your phone after a few minutes that confirms the issue is with the primary folder. Your IT department may need to assist you with exporting your contacts and repairing the data with SCANPST or repairing the system folders.

I hope you get it working, even if that means getting a new phone that doesn't have this issue! If you find a fix or keep running into issues please let us know.

 

[PeacePhil47]

Re: Nexus 6, Lollipop, and Office 365 syncing issues

Hi RoundWound5,

I thought I would give you an update. I followed your advice above and cleared my cache on my phone and unfortunately, nothing changed. So, I set it aside and picked up my Nexus 7 tablet. It is set up very much like my phone, but wifi only. I don't generally use it for writing emails and obviously calling people, so I never had cause to check my contacts. But it doing so, I found that it was doing the same thing. So armed with this new information, I was able to go back to my IT Dept. and say its wasn't my phone that is the problem. Prior to this I had directed them to our discussion here in the forum, but basically was told that there was no way the data was corrupt. So, I begged, citing 'What do we have to lose?"

So, that's almost what they did. They removed my contacts. Created a few test contacts, which amazingly were able to sync. The Tech then added all my contacts back in and now both my Nexus 6 phone, and my Nexus 7 tablet are working properly. They didn't run any kind of scan on them, but at this point it doesn't seem necessary. The one thing that didn't happen is that the Tech deleted the "Suggested" contacts, but did not add them back in. So, I would love to figure out how to tell my phone not to sync with the "Suggested Contacts" but I don't want to mess with it and possibly mess things up. All is working properly.

So, had they listened to what you were telling me, this would have been corrected a lot sooner.

Thank you again for your valuable input. You were spot on.

Sincerely,

PeacePhil47

 

[roundwound5]

Re: Nexus 6, Lollipop, and Office 365 syncing issues

You're welcome, PeacePhil47, and thank you for the udpate! I'm really glad to hear they took the time to check it out and remove and re-import the contacts to get it syncing again.

With Office 365, and Exchange 2010 and above the Suggested Contacts are stored in their own folder, but most Androids (including our beloved Nexus devices) just lump all the contact folders from a particular account together.
It sounds like you want to keep the Suggested Contacts, just in Outlook and not on the phone.

Your post got me thinking about this so I tried the "simple hack" from jatinc posted in an older AC forum thread, http://forums.androidcentral.com/droid-razr/197302-need-stop-suggested-contacts-syncing-phone.html. It's really good info and it works. I just tested it by assigning my suggested contacts a color "orange" category then changed my Contacts to Display customized settings to "all others" with Orange deselected.